The Dangerous Years (32 page)

‘I have, sir.’

‘Can’t have twelve hundred men stumbling about the ship trying to find where they’re supposed to go. Midshipmen arrived?’

‘They’re already beginning to throw their weight about and suck sweets when they shouldn’t, sir.’

The great day arrived bright and clear. Petty officers and midshipmen had been well instructed in their duties and, as Kelly appeared on deck, lorries began to arrive, piled high with kitbags, hammocks and sailors hampered by raincoats and attaché cases. As they tossed the gear into chalked squares that had been prepared, the sound of drums and fifes was heard in the distance and a blue snake appeared round the corner of a shed. The barracks bluejackets band was pounding away to the best of its ability but the snake was so long those farthest from the music could hear it only as they turned corners, and seemed to be advancing in a series of hops, skips and jumps as they constantly changed step.

‘You’ve heard of the military two-step, Seamus,’ Kelly said to Boyle. ‘This is the naval version.’

The midshipmen with the commissioning cards were in place as the column crashed to a stop. Immediately there was a buzz of chattering. ‘Captain’s messenger. That’ll be nice.’ ‘’Oo’s the Bloke? Maguire of
Mordant
? They say he’s a bit regimental, don’t they?’

The Marine detachment arrived soon afterwards, their band playing ‘Hearts of Oak’, rifles, packs and white helmets squared off to a T, and as everybody scrambled aboard to stow bags and hammocks and snatch the best places below decks – leading hands near to the ventilators, newly-joined ordinary seamen squeezed into the alleyways – it was obvious they all knew what had happened at Devonport. ‘Lucia!’ ‘Lucia!’ ‘Lucia!’ The word intruded again and again in a low buzz and Kelly found himself on the lookout for any of
Rebuke
’s officers who might be inclined the same way as the first lieutenant of the guilty vessel.

They got the ship clear at last of what the dockyard mateys had left around – the rejected machine parts, the firebricks from the boiler room furnaces, the coke braziers on which they’d brewed their tea, the miles of air hose and electric cable, the old lunch packets, newspapers and fag ends, and started to set about the muddy footprints and the gulls’ droppings she’d accumulated during her long stay alongside. A farewell dance was held in the Guildhall for the crew, and a cocktail party on board for the officers and their wives, and eventually the great ship left for her final drills, damage control exercises, full power trials, and anything else that occurred to them. To Kelly, who had never assisted in the departure of anything bigger than a light cruiser,
Rebuke
seemed enormous. With her strange bridge arrangements, peering down towards old Portsmouth as she left harbour was like staring down from Blackpool Tower. There also seemed an extraordinary remoteness between stem and stern and she had a majestic sluggishness in answering her helm and propellers, but Captain Harrison – or Gorgeous George, as he had come to be known not only to the lower deck but also to the Wardroom – knew exactly what he was doing.

The ship’s company were experienced, though they were a mixed lot. Portsmouth crews were always an unknown factor. Chatham crews were always easiest because they were largely Londoners with a helpful Cockney wit, while Devonport crews – largely West Countrymen with a scattering of unemployed Welsh miners – though slow on the uptake, were as solid in behaviour as they were in thought. Crews from Pompey, however, came from everywhere in the British Isles and it was necessary to feel your way with them. There was always a large proportion of Scots – because there was no manning port north of the Tweed – and many Midlanders, both of whom suffered at leave time from being a long way from home and were inclined to be bloody- minded.

Even the officers, Kelly found for the first time in his life, needed watching. They had already been severely shaken by the Geddes Axe, which had seen the abrupt departure from the Navy of twelve hundred lieutenants and lieutenant- commanders and a further six hundred officers at other levels, and in the Atlantic Fleet, to which
Rebuke
belonged, they were so often changed nobody ever got a chance to settle down and work as a team. In addition, with no fewer than nineteen lieutenant-commanders on board, work that should have been done by a midshipman or a petty officer was consigned to a lieutenant, while men in lower ranks had no chance of exercising responsibility and most of them had little practice in watch-keeping at sea.

Captain Harrison didn’t make life any easier. He was a rigid disciplinarian punctilious about side parties and greetings and, a man of private means, it was his delight to point out to Kelly that, unlike most married officers, he preferred not to spend too much time ashore. ‘I’ve been married thirteen years,’ he liked to say, ‘but my wife has learned to do without me.’

‘Perhaps she prefers it that way,’ was the first lieutenant’s opinion.

Fortunately, with hot food, Captain Harrison also believed firmly in that rare and precious herb that rarely grew in home waters, leave – as much as possible and whenever possible – though for Kelly it provided little joy because it was always difficult even to find Christina. The ship spent a month in and out of Portland and, as they returned to Pompey, Harrison decreed leave for half the ship’s company. Long refits, like Heaven, were always a long way off and since they’d only just emerged from one they had to be thankful for the one sane element in Harrison’s make-up. As they came alongside there was a telegram waiting for Kelly – ‘At Thakeham. Must talk’ – and he set off, hopefully expecting that at last Christina had begun to see sense and decided to abandon what he considered a half-witted existence in London for the more mature life of the country. When he arrived a Thakeham, however, the place was empty as usual, and Bridget met him with a worried look on her face.

‘I thought you were meeting Mrs Maguire in London, Master Kelly,’ she said.

‘Is that where she is, Biddy?’ He saw Bridget give him a sidelong glance and hurried on. ‘Business, I expect. When did she leave?’

Bridget looked puzzled. ‘Master Kelly, sir, she never came.’

Furiously angry, Kelly caught the late train to London but even in the house in Carlton Terrace there was no indication of where his wife had gone. Without success, he telephoned a few friends who might have been able to tell him where she was and in the end headed for his club for a meal. Verschoyle was in the bar in evening dress, knocking back a pink gin.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What are you doing in London?’

‘Looking for my wife chiefly,’ Kelly growled. ‘What are you up to in your glad rags?’

‘Dining out.’

‘Who is it this time?’

Verschoyle shrugged. ‘Old acquaintance. Known her for years. Met her in somebody’s bed. Bored with her husband, I’m afraid.’ He took a sip at his drink. ‘I see our political masters have reduced the sentences on
Lucia
’s guilty men. Considering they didn’t hesitate to put the captain and first lieutenant on half pay, it smacks of politics rather than discipline. All the same–’ Verschoyle shrugged ‘–I can’t imagine it attracting much attention in the turgid atmosphere in the world outside. Not with two million unemployed and no one with any ideas about how to find jobs for them. What’s of more concern is this talk about reducing the 1919 rates of pay to effect economies.’

It came as no surprise. Everybody knew the country was in a mess and sacrifices were inevitable.

‘So long as they’re all the same,’ Kelly said, ‘I can’t imagine anybody grumbling.’

‘It’ll cause a lot of ill-feeling,’ Verschoyle pointed out. ‘Chaps who joined before 1925 consider themselves privileged. They think they’ve got a contract that their pay can’t be touched.’ He gestured with his glass. ‘But they haven’t, you know. The act states quite categorically that they’re not entitled to claim a right to any rate of pay or any other emolument under existing scales in the event of reduced scales being introduced.’

‘The small print?’

‘I looked it up.’

‘These chaps are seasoned men.’

Verschoyle shrugged. ‘They’re also the chaps who’re married and have the heaviest travel expenses. Their marriage allowances have never met reality.’

Kelly frowned. ‘I hope those bloody fools in Parliament have enough sense to tread warily,’ he growled. ‘I don’t suppose they’ve noticed that the Russian revolution of 1905 started in the navy, and the German revolution of 1918 in the High Seas Fleet.’

Verschoyle shrugged. ‘I think they’re so bloody besotted with socialist idealism,’ he observed, ‘they don’t notice anything at all. But I can’t really see ’em staying in power much longer, can you? The Budget admitted a deficit of twenty-three million and it’s well known it’s nearer thirty- eight. They’ve got to reduce it and I’ve heard that the remedies they’re suggesting are explosive.’

There was a nervous air about the club. The financial position was unstable. Abroad it was even impossible and everybody was waiting to see the Labour Government collapse under the weight of its own problems.

The talk at the bar was bitter. Naval training and staff courses were still unreal and nobody could see where they were heading. Kelly finished his drink, anxious to get away from the atmosphere of dissatisfaction and complaint. He was bored with London and angry with Christina. All in all, he was dissatisfied with a lot of things. He didn’t like
Rebuke
and he didn’t like Captain Harrison, but as a naval officer that was something he was expected to handle without resentment, and after all,
Rebuke
was a great deal more exciting than the shore station to which he’d been condemned for eighteen months on returning from the Med. At least she was a ship, and she hummed with activity. The officers on the whole were rather too comfortable, but the younger lieutenants were lively enough, devoid of inferiority complexes, quick-witted, arrogant, lusty, apt to drink more than they should, yet never missing a watch or a duty despite the hangovers they suffered. It wasn’t the ship, he knew. The mystique was still there, as it always would be, but there was a sense of disillusionment, an awareness of the Navy being led by old heroes who were no longer right.

He frowned, trying to see into his wife’s mind. Christina had never been hypnotised by the Navy and her only comment on being shown round naval museums had been ‘I’m sick of the death of bloody Nelson.’ The awe of uniforms and medals, with which she’d first been overwhelmed, had long since gone and she’d grown tired of having a husband who would not come to heel.

He moved restlessly. The thought of going back to Thakeham didn’t interest him, yet the idea of spending a weekend in London appalled, and in the end he asked for the telephone and dialled a Belgravia number. Vera von Schwerin’s voice answered, and there was a little laugh down the telephone as she recognised his voice.

‘Kelly Georgeivitch! You must come. My husband’s in Germany and likely to be for a long time yet. Things are beginning to move in the Reich. Adolf Hitler’s become a power at last.’

She greeted him at the door wearing a dress that had been chosen less for what it concealed than for what it revealed, and she informed him immediately that the servants were all out.

‘You don’t change much, Vera Nikolaevna,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘In Berlin, unfaithfulness doesn’t worry people any more, and morals have a new look. Berlin’s lost its conscience and everything’s permissible there. Even meetings between old lovers, and you and I will always be a special case. We once committed murder together and that forges a link that’s difficult to break.’

They dined at a restaurant along the river and drove back in the dusk into the city. As they opened the door to her house, she took his hand and pulled him after her towards the stairs, kicking off her shoes and flinging her handbag and fur stole to the floor as she went.

He had known all evening what was in her mind and he didn’t back away. Christina’s sexuality had been the only strong link between them, and at that moment he couldn’t remember when he’d last been in her bed.

Vera was glancing backwards at him from the bedroom door, and she shrugged herself out of her dress as easily as if it had been a cloak.

‘For God’s sake,’ Kelly said. ‘Are you trying to set a record?’

‘Oi, my husband is a bore who considers bed is only for sleeping in.’

For Kelly there was a strange absence of satisfaction in their love-making. It made him feel like a devious schoolboy, but he never knew these days what Christina was up to, and Vera von Schwerin, with the brash indifference to morals that appeared to be the thing these days in Berlin, asked no questions.

‘It’s odd to find you a German,’ he said.

Her shoulders moved in an indifferent shrug. ‘There are White Russians in France, Turkey, China and America,’ she said. ‘Everywhere except Russia. Soon, however – very soon – we shall be back in Moscow. Can you imagine Adolf Hitler and the Bolshevik commissars ever seeing eye to eye.’

‘Are you a National Socialist?’ Kelly asked.

She indicated a photograph on the dressing table and he saw a dank forelock and ridiculous moustache and a pair of hypnotic eyes. He felt they were making love under the gaze of an arbiter of morals.

‘Many people are Nazis,’ she said. ‘But so far they do not all admit it. And there are thousands more in Holy Russia – ex-Tsarists, just waiting for Adolf Hitler to come to power.’

‘I think you’re being bloody optimistic,’ Kelly said.

She gave him an enigmatic smile. ‘That’s because you’re British and the British have consistently underestimated Hitler.’

He returned to the house in Carlton Terrace long after midnight, drawing at his cigarette until the smoke was in danger of coming out of his ears and down his sleeves. As the taxi drew to a stop, lie climbed out and paid off the driver. The air was chilly and there was a hint of rain about, so that he paused, enjoying the coolness after the hothouse atmosphere of the Von Schwerin house. He walked down the road for a few minutes, still smoking, trying to organise his thoughts, then he threw away his cigarette and walked briskly back. As he opened the door, he saw Christina in the lounge drinking whisky with a young man who was so put out by Kelly’s expression he hurriedly emptied his glass and vanished.